Venice has been in a state of perpetual renaissance since tobacco heir Abbot Kinney founded the seaside resort town in 1905. And yet traces of its past stubbornly persist in street names, artworks and the built environment.

Deep in the Amazon, George is determined to retrace Theodore Roosevelt’s legendary expedition and witness first-hand how deforestation and climate change are affecting one of the earth’s most critical ecosystems.

Across the world, Indigenous peoples have lived in their ancestral homelands for thousands of years. To have their perspective and their traditional knowledge is key when confronting contemporary environmental challenges.

This episode journeys to the Smith River near the Oregon border to discover how the Tolowa Dee-ni’ are reviving traditional harvesting of shellfish while working with state agencies to monitor toxicity levels.

A Pepperdine University student was among those still missing today following an overnight shooting massacre at a Thousand Oaks nightclub crowded with patrons, including 16 students from the Malibu college and three off-duty Los Angeles Police Department.

"Tending Nature" shines a light on the environmental knowledge of indigenous peoples across California by exploring how the state's Native peoples have actively shaped and tended the land for millennia.

This season features six half-hour episodes showcasing a collection of short films from schools across Southern California, including, winners in the categories of Documentary, Narrative and Animation.

Carpinteria State Beach | KCET

Carpinteria State Beach

Carpinteria State Beach is just twelve miles south of Santa Barbara and is a great family destination that offers a mile of beach for swimming, surfing, fishing, tidepool exploring and camping. Huell learns about all of this, plus how Carpinteria got its name and the role that naturally-occurring tar played in its history.

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Huell visits the huge Cambodian community in Long Beach; with a population of over 45,000, its more than any city in the world other than the Capitol of Cambodia. His tour teaches him about the culture, customs, art, music and Huell’s favorite — food.

Where do barbers learn to cut hair? At college, of course. Huell visits the Downtown American Barber College in Los Angeles and talks to a group of students who spend nine months learning this old-fashioned trade. Huell even gives them a test of his own when he takes a seat and gets a trim.

Believe it or not, there is an ant that lives in California that is capable of killing you. The Red Imported Fire Ant is a nasty little creature that is responsible for many attacks that range form mild to very serious. Huell gets together with the Orange County Fire Ant Authority and goes on an eradication mission to help rid our state of this painful problem.

They may be small and often out of tune, but Huell discovers that beautiful music can be made with toy pianos. Scott Paulson, the resident Schroeder at the University of California San Diego, takes Huell on a tour of the Geisel Library’s Toy Piano Collection. Huell is also treated to an amusing toy piano recital, including scores commissioned exclusively for this unassuming instrument.

Rock & Roll and cars have always gone hand in hand. Join Huell as he gets a behind the scenes tour of the Peterson Automotive Museums new exhibit Cars & Guitars of Rock ‘N Roll, which showcases some stunning cars owned by famous rock and rollers. Billy Gibbons from the band ZZ Top shows Huell some amazing cars and talks about the significance of the exhibit.

Join Huell as he visits one of the last remaining buildings from the great old Long Beach Pike Amusement Park. For over 40 years the LITE-O-LINE has been going strong as a sort of ‘pinball bingo’ game; but, the history of the building goes back even further, as it used to house the famous Loof’s Carousel.

After getting a letter about the world's largest stuffed Komodo Dragon, Huell visits the World Museum of Natural History at La Sierra University. Once there, he discovers all the other treasures housed there, from minerals that glow in black light to a world class Freeze-dry taxidermy facility.

There’s lots going on Friday nights in downtown Garden Grove. Huell strolls along Main Street admiring the many hot rods lined up for their weekly outing, and pops into the markets and restaurant that make this location such a popular, family-friendly destination for residents.

Completed in 1915, the Ridge Route was carved from the San Gabriel Mountains by workers using mule-drawn dirt scrapers. From ridge top to ridge top, they cleared a 20 foot-wide roadway which was the first direct route between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, uniting Northern and Southern California. Today, a 30-mile portion of the abandoned Ridge Route between Castaic and Gorman, can be found hidden in the mountains just east of Interstate 5 which long ago replaced it. Huell is joined by Harrison Scott, a retired Pacific Bell engineer, who, with the help of U.S.

Spring is here and Huell meets the new arrivals at the Bouncing Hoofs Ranch in Mojave. This farm is home to a variety of goats and Huell learns all about their hair, their milk and, of course, the babies.

From 1901 to 1998, the Vail and Vickers families had been cattle ranching on Santa Rosa Island. When you ranch on an island, you have to come up with a creative way to get your cattle to the mainland for market. The families had a custom built boat made named the Vaquero. Huell travels to Santa Barbara to visit with the families and builders of the Vaquero and learn about it’s fascinating history.

When most people think of Yosemite, they imagine towering peaks and cascading waterfalls, but there is an amazing human history that is told through some of the many buildings that dot the valley floor. In this adventure, Huell discovers two small buildings that are very historic and very beautiful. He visits the Yosemite Valley Chapel, which was built in 1879 and is the oldest structure in park. The little chapel continues to serve as a place of worship for residents and visitors alike, as it has done for over 125 years.

Huell recently had the adventure of a lifetime when he climbed Yosemite's formidable Half Dome. Join him in this one-hour special documenting his 17 mile round trip trek, along with other avid hikers, to conquer this 4800-foot high landmark.

Huell tours the Victorian residence in Martinez where the naturalist John Muir lived from 1890 to his death in 1914, and meets the special folks who are responsible for preserving this important site. While living there, Muir laid the foundations for the creation of the National Park Service in 1916.

Huell joins the centennial celebration of Colonel Charles Young's tenure as superintendent at Sequoia National Park. Young led his "Buffalo Soldiers" during a historic summer working in the second national park ever created in the United States. Young discovered and named a majestic Giant Sequoia after an individual that inspired and influenced his life, Booker T. Washington. After nearly 100 years, this tree has been rediscovered and stands as a monument to both Colonel Charles Young and Booker T. Washington.

A shout echos through Yosemite ... "let the fire fall," and from 1872 to 1969 that's just what happened. Join Huell at the top of Glacier Point with Nic Fiore who was the last to push a pile of burning embers off the edge, creating the beautiful red hot "waterfall" effect know as Firefall. Then down to the bottom at Camp Curry, the best spot to view Firefall, where Huell talks with Keith and Ginny Bee who for 42 years ran the nightly outdoor theater show which led up to the fiery finale of this now lost California tradition.

San Onofre State Beach in San Diego County covers some 2100 acres and has five miles of beach, including Trestles – one of the most famous and truly iconic surf spots in the world! Park Supt. Rich Rozzelle showed Huell a spectacular section of the park that most people don’t know exists. Turns out the park goes four miles inland, contains several archeological sites, is the home of seven threatened or endangered species and protects significant portions of San Mateo Creek, which is one of the last relatively unspoiled watersheds in Southern California.

Leave it to our own Huell Howser to think he could go kayaking in Death Valley! But it turns out that's exactly what he does as he travels to normally parched Death Valley National Park to kayak on the huge salt lake created by this year's heavy rains. Ancient Lake Manly at Badwater only reappears about every 100 years, so he figured he better go for it.

In addition to the lake, Huell also captures the bounty of endless fields of wildflowers, which covered Death Valley this spring.

Huell travels to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake to see the largest concentration of rock art in the Western Hemisphere. The small canyon houses up to 6,000 images. Although an accurate dating technique is still being sought, certain petroglyphs are thought to be 16,000 years old, while others were made as recently as 1800. This rock art is so important to our cultural heritage and our knowledge of the desert's past that the sites were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1964.

Located just of highway 14, Red Rock Canyon State Park features scenic desert cliffs, buttes and spectacular rock formations. The park is not only rich in natural beauty, but has a deep human history as well. From the native Kawaiisu Indians, who left petroglyphs, to the 1880s 20-mule team freight wagons that stopped for water. There are also the remains of 1890s-era mining operations, and the area has been the site for a number of movies.

Travel to Downieville, nestled high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where gold miners organized the first ski races in the country; meet the staff on the Mountain Messenger, the state's oldest weekly newspaper; and watch a demonstration of the long, heavy wooden skis worn by the gold miners in the mid-1800s.

When most people think of Shasta Lake, they imagine themselves on a houseboat enjoying California's largest manmade reservoir. With 365 miles of shoreline it is a boaters paradise. What most people don't think about is the massive structure that is responsible for holding back the water that creates Shasta Lake. We're talking about Shasta Dam which, is a perfect example of "California's Gold". Construction of the dam started in 1938 and ended in 1945. It's 602 feet high, 883 feet thick at the bottom, 30 feet thick at the top, and 3,460 feet long.

It's thought of as one of the bleakest and most desolate places in the world, but as Huell discovers, Death Valley can be beautiful. Contrary to its name, Death Valley is host to a wide variety of life- from prehistoric pupfish to stunning miniature wildflowers and much more!

This episode explores how surfers, bodybuilders, and acrobats taught Californians how to have fun and stay young at the beach — and how the 1966 documentary The Endless Summer shared the Southern California idea of the beach with the rest of the world.

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Deep in the Amazon, George is determined to retrace Theodore Roosevelt’s legendary expedition and witness first-hand how deforestation and climate change are affecting one of the earth’s most critical ecosystems.

When Phryne arrives at an idyllic vineyard in the countryside to investigate a suspicious death in the past, she lands in the middle of an annual Wine Festival and the recent murder of her own 'client'.